Technical Field
This disclosure relates generally to electronic devices and corresponding methods, and more particularly to electronic devices with motion sensors.
Background Art
Mobile electronic communication devices, such as mobile telephones, smart phones, gaming devices, and the like, are used by billions of people. These owners use mobile communication devices for many different purposes including, but not limited to, voice communications and data communications for text messaging, Internet browsing, commerce such as banking, and social networking.
As the technology of these devices has advanced, so too has their feature set. For example, not too long ago all electronic devices had physical keypads. Today touch sensitive displays are more frequently seen as user interface devices. Similarly, it used to be that the only way to deliver user input to a device was with touch, either through a keypad or touch sensitive display. Today some devices are equipped with voice recognition that allows a user to speak commands to a device instead of typing them.
Some electronic devices even include motion sensors that can recognize certain movements of a user. For example, accelerometers in some electronic devices can detect a rhythmic up-down and side-to-side motion so as to be used as a pedometer. These electronic devices can count these rhythmic motions to determine a number of steps a user has taken.
While these motion sensors are useful for simple tasks like counting a user's steps, their use has been limited due to the fact that it is frequently very difficult for such devices to identify what gesture a user is making. This is true even when the motion sensors detect that a gesture is occurring.
It would be advantageous to have additional solutions, in the form of an improved apparatus, an improved method, or both, to be able to more accurately identify gestures resulting in motion of electronic devices.
Skilled artisans will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of embodiments of the present disclosure.